was an Italian virtuoso flautist and composer, a technical innovator on his instrument and a professor of music.
Briccialdi was born in Terni. His contributions include inventing the B-flat thumb key for the Boehm flute. He died in Florence.
Briccialdi was born in Terni, Italy, in the Papal States on 2 March 1818 and began studying flute with his father. After his father’s death, the 14-year-old Briccialdi moved to Rome to pursue a musical career and avoid family pressure to join the priesthood. His first appointment was to the Accdemia di Santa Cecilia in Rome at the age of 17.
While in Rome he studied composition and, in 1835, began teaching flute at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia. He then moved to Naples, where he was the flute teacher for the royal family.
Over the next couple of years he worked in Naples and Milan, and was flute teacher to the king’s brother. Then in 1841 he toured Europe and America, finally settling in London the following year.
In London he became a director of the instrument making firm Rudall and Rose and was responsible for several mechanical developments which are still in use today. He was appointed professor of flute at the Conservatoire in Florence in 1870, and remained there until his death in 1881. In 1996 the asteroid N. 7714 was named in his memory.
Briccialdi was sometimes known as “the Paganini of the flute.”
